Interesting facts about St. Isaac's Cathedral and a photo from the dome to the city. Great dominant. Interesting facts about St. Isaac's Cathedral Features and interesting facts of St. Isaac's Cathedral

St. Isaac's Cathedral, one of the most impressive buildings in St. Petersburg, was consecrated exactly 156 years ago, (May 30) June 11, 1858. Its history, which dates back almost from the day the Northern capital was founded, is full of unexpected twists and surprising facts..

Two predecessors

Back in 1707, in the city under construction, at the behest of Peter I, the church of St. Isaac of Dalmatia was erected. It was not for nothing that the emperor decided to honor him - he was born on the day of the holy memory of the saint, May 30 according to the Julian calendar. Here, in a hastily built church, damp and soaked with ship tar, Peter I and Marta Skavronskaya (Catherine I) were married in 1712.

First St. Isaac's Church. Lithograph from a drawing by O. Montferrand. 1845 Photo: Public Domain

The second, already stone, church of St. Isaac of Dalmatia was laid in 1717 - the first one had already dilapidated by that time. The temple stood on the banks of the Neva, approximately at the place where the Bronze Horseman now stands. The building was very reminiscent of the Peter and Paul Cathedral with its architectural design and high spire. However, the coastal soil under the church constantly sagged, and in 1735 it was badly damaged by a lightning strike. Then the architect Savva Chevakinsky was invited to assess the state of the cathedral. He did not dissemble and said that the building would not last long. It was necessary to change the location of the cathedral and build it anew. From that moment began the history of St. Isaac's Cathedral, which we know.

A fulfilled prediction

Chevakinsky and was appointed in 1761 to head the construction of the new St. Isaac's Cathedral, but the preparation was delayed, and soon the architect resigned. His place was taken by Antonio Rinaldi, and the ceremonial laying of the cathedral took place only in 1768. Rinaldi supervised the construction until the death of Catherine II, and after that he went abroad. The building was erected only up to the eaves. At the direction of Paul I, Vincenzo Brenna took over the cathedral and changed the project.

The cathedral changed both architects and appearance several times. Photo: AiF / Ksenia Matveeva

Marble for cladding was redirected to the Mikhailovsky Castle, so the cathedral looked strange - brick walls rose on a marble base. This "monument of two reigns" was consecrated in 1802, but it soon became clear that it spoils the appearance of "ceremonial Petersburg".

Under Alexander I, a competition for its ennoblement was held twice: in 1809 and 1813. All the architects offered to simply demolish it and build a new one, so the emperor instructed the engineer Augustine Betancourt to take over the reconstruction project of the cathedral personally. He entrusted this matter to the young architect Auguste Montferrand.

The new cathedral was laid in 1819, but the Montferrand project had to be finalized for another six years. The construction dragged on for almost forty years, which gave rise to rumors about a certain prediction that the architect received from a clairvoyant. Allegedly, the sorcerer prophesied to him that he would die as soon as the cathedral was completed. Indeed, a month after the consecration ceremony of the cathedral, the architect died.

Another legend says that Alexander II noticed among the sculptures of saints, with a bow greeting Isaac of Dolmatsky, Montferrand himself holding his head straight. Noticing to himself the pride of the architect, the emperor allegedly did not shake hands with him and did not thank him for the work, which made him upset, took to his bed and died. In fact, Montferrand died from an acute attack of rheumatism, which happened after suffering pneumonia. He bequeathed to bury himself in St. Isaac's Cathedral, but Emperor Alexander II did not give his consent. The widow of Montferrand took the body of the architect to Paris, where he was buried in the Montmartre cemetery.

Engineering marvel

During the construction of the cathedral, many technologies were used, original and daring for their time. The building was unusually heavy for marshy soil, and its construction required 10,762 piles to be driven into the base of the foundation. It took five years, and in the end, the townspeople began to joke about this - they say, they somehow hammered a pile, and it completely went underground. Scored the second - and from her not a trace. Third, fourth, and so on, until a letter arrived from New York: “You ruined our pavement! At the end of a log sticking out of the ground, the stamp of the St. Petersburg timber exchange "Gromov and K!"

When installing granite columns, innovative technologies for that time were used. Photo: AIF / Ksenia Matveeva Separate attention is given to the granite columns of the cathedral. Granite for them was mined on the coast of the Gulf of Finland, near Vyborg. Stonemasons invented a special way to extract monolithic blocks: they drilled holes in the rock, inserted wedges into them and beat until a crack appeared in the stone. Iron levers with rings were inserted into the crack, ropes were threaded through the rings. 40 people pulled the ropes and gradually broke out the granite blocks.

Stones were delivered to the city by rail, although there was no railway in Russia at that time. The installation of 48 columns took two years and was completed in 1830, and in 1841, for the first time in history, 24 columns weighing 64 tons each were raised to a height of more than 40 meters to be installed around the dome. It took more than 100 kilograms of pure gold to gild the dome, and another 300 kilograms were required to gild the interior.

St. Isaac's Cathedral is the fourth largest in the world, its weight is 300 thousand tons, and its height is 101.5 meters. Isaac's Colonnade remains the highest observation platform in the city center.

Museum of Atheism

Like all religious buildings, after the October Revolution the temple was devastated. In May 1922, 48 kilograms of gold objects and two tons of silver were taken from Isaac to the needs of the starving Volga region. In 1928, the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee decided "to leave the cathedral building in the exclusive use of Glavnauka as a museum monument." On April 12, 1931, one of the first anti-religious museums in Soviet Russia was opened in the cathedral.

This saved the temple from destruction - they began to lead excursions here, on which visitors were told about the suffering of the serf builders of the building and about the dangers of religion. Another part of the tour was of a scientific and educational nature - a Foucault pendulum hung under the dome, the length of which was 91 meters. The pendulum is still stored in the storerooms of the temple, which received the status of a state memorial museum.

War

The harsh years of the war also left the temple unscathed. The dome was covered with camouflage by military climbers (one of them, Mikhail Bobrov, lives in St. Petersburg to this day and bears the title of honorary citizen of the city). According to the legend, with the threat of the occupation of the city, it was necessary to find a repository for those valuables that they did not have time to take out. Then one elderly officer offered to collect everything in the cellars of Isaac, explaining this by the fact that the Nazis use his dome as a landmark and would not shoot at him.

All 900 days of the blockade, museum valuables from the suburbs of Leningrad, as well as the Museum of the History of the City and the Summer Palace of Peter the Great, lay in complete safety, and on the square in front of the cathedral, the blockade fighters planted a garden where they managed to grow cabbage - this is evidenced by archival footage from 1942.

But it was not possible to completely avoid damage to the cathedral - the traces of fragments on the columns of the western portico still remind of shell explosions. Due to the lack of heating, wall paintings were damaged, and Bruni's painting "Adam and Eve in Paradise" was completely washed away.

Museum present

In 1963, the post-war restoration of the cathedral was completed. The Museum of Atheism was moved to the Kazan Cathedral, and the Foucault pendulum was removed, so that since then Isaac has been working exclusively as a museum. Here and today you can see the bust of Auguste Montferrand, made of 43 types of minerals and stones - all that was used in the construction of the temple.

In 1990, for the first time since 1922, His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Rus' celebrated the Divine Liturgy in the church. In 2005, the "Agreement between the State Museum-Monument" St. Isaac's Cathedral "and the St. Petersburg Diocese on joint activities on the territory of the objects of the museum complex" was signed, and today services are held regularly on holidays and Sundays.

We strive abroad with all our might, forgetting that our country is full of interesting places, secrets and mysteries. Today we turn to the symbol of St. Petersburg - St. Isaac's Cathedral and its secrets.

1. Why is the cathedral called St. Isaac's?

It is known that the modern St. Isaac's Cathedral is far from the first in the history of St. Petersburg. Before him there were at least three St. Isaac's churches. The first church was built under Peter I in 1707. The emperor decided to name it in honor of his heavenly patron - Isaac of Dalmatia: the day of memory of Isaac coincides with the birthday of Peter (May 30).

2. Who was the architect of the modern Cathedral?

The unsuccessful project of the Third St. Isaac's Cathedral ended with the fact that Emperor Alexander I began to look for another architect to build a new temple, but on the condition that the three consecrated altars remain intact. Auguste Montferrand, who had just arrived from France, was immediately appointed to this position. And in 1818, according to his project, the construction of St. Isaac's Cathedral began, which would end only 40 years later in 1858 under Alexander II.

3. The most unusual thing in St. Isaac's Cathedral ...

Perhaps the strangest thing seems to be the presence of a stained-glass window in the eastern part of the Temple. The idea to place a stained glass window depicting the Resurrected Christ belonged to the German architect Leo von Klenze. A stained-glass window was created in Munich according to a sketch by the German artist Heinrich Maria von Hess. In 1843 it was installed in St. Isaac's Cathedral. The fact is that stained glass art was characteristic of the Catholic Church and the Gothic style, but not of Orthodox churches. It is believed that such an unusual combination of Western and Eastern worlds, that is, Catholicism and Orthodoxy, was to be expected precisely in the era of the heyday of romanticism in Russia.

4. What is depicted on the ceiling of the Cathedral?

St. Isaac's Cathedral from top to bottom is decorated with wall paintings, mosaics, sculptures, marble trim. If you stand right under the dome and look up, you can see one of the works of Karl Bryullov - a ceiling depicting a praying Mother of God. On the right hand of the Mother of God is John the Baptist, and on the left - John the Theologian. Further in the circle are the heavenly patrons of the House of Romanov. In the very center of the ceiling is a white dove symbolizing the Holy Spirit. Many art historians interpret this plot as a deification of the power of the Romanovs. It is also known that K. Bryullov performed this painting for 4 years.

5 What did Ezekiel see?

On the western vault of the central nave there is a painting by F. Bruni - "The Vision of the Prophet Ezekiel". In the very center, the prophet Ezekiel himself is depicted standing on a stone, to whom, according to biblical tradition, the Lord God appeared and led him into a field full of bones. And God said that the prophet would speak His words, that He would breathe life into them. The very moment when Ezekiel speaks the words of the Lord in front of the dead is depicted. The dead are the house of Israel, whom the Lord promised to bring out of their tombs. In this story, they see a prototype of eternal life and resurrection.

6. What is written on the facade of the Cathedral?

On the northern facade there is a bas-relief "The Resurrection of Christ": Christ himself is visible, on both sides of him are angels, and behind the angels are people shocked by what they saw. Under the relief composition there is an inscription in gold letters: “ Lord, the king will rejoice in your strength.”.

On the western facade is depicted "The meeting of Isaac of Dalmatia with Emperor Theodosius." The figure of Isaac blessing the emperor and his wife is on the right side of the bas-relief. Warriors bow down behind him. In the left corner of the bas-relief there is a figure holding a model of the cathedral in his hands - this is the architect O. Montferrand. Below the bas-relief is the inscription: King of kings»

The southern facade is decorated with a bas-relief "The Adoration of the Magi", in the center of which is Mary with a baby, and on both sides of her are the Magi who came to worship.
Under the bas-relief is the inscription "My temple shall be called the temple of prayer."

On the eastern facade there is a bas-relief on the plot of Isaac of Dalmatia stopping Emperor Valentine. In the center is visible the figure of the emperor on a horse, to the left of him is Isaac. Behind Isaac are depicted soldiers holding his hands. And the inscription under the bas-relief: "Let us put our trust in thee, Lord, let us not be put to shame forever"

7. Cathedral in numbers

The total weight of the entire St. Isaac's Cathedral is 300 thousand tons
The area of ​​the Cathedral is 4000 square meters.
At the same time, 7500 people can be in the Cathedral
The total weight of the gold decoration is 100 kilograms
Weight of the upper colonnade - 67 tons
In total, there are 103 wall paintings in the Cathedral.

The great creation of the architect Montferrand is the temple of St. Isaac of Dalmatia. This temple was the fourth in a row, since the fate of the first three ended sadly. At that time, an unknown draftsman Auguste Montferrand was engaged in his project. But the construction of the temple lasted for 40 years. One architect Mantouan Modui believed that the temple would fall apart. Therefore, this project had to be reworked. When it was built and the domes began to be painted, the artist Bryullov did it first. Later, he became seriously ill, so Peter Basin had to finish this work. The illumination of the temple was planned in 1858. But before that, the cloth, with which they wanted to lay the path of the king from the Winter Palace, disappeared somewhere. A month after the consecration of the temple, the draftsman Monferrano died. Despite this, his Saint Isaac's Cathedral considered the decoration of the square for more than a hundred years.

1. St. Isaac's Cathedral - the idea of ​​Peter the Great. So there were circumstances that he was born on the day of memory of Isaac of Dalmatia. For this reason alone, he decided to honor his memory with the construction of a great cathedral, which can rightly be considered the same age as the city.
2. The cathedral was rebuilt several times. Catherine the First and Peter the Great were married in the first church. And now in St. Petersburg there is a fourth cathedral. From the very beginning, its construction was carried out using marble, and later the sovereign ordered to finish everything with brick. For this reason, many contemporaries scoffed.

   

3. The construction of the temple lasted 40 years by 500,000 builders. Tsar Alexander the First did not like the cathedral in the city center, so he decided to break it down and build a new one. He wanted to have a temple made of granite, so that he would surprise with his beauty. It was built by the architect Auguste Montferrand, who took 40 years to complete this construction. Rumor has it that Auguste was in no hurry to finish it for the reason that a fortuneteller told him about death immediately after the construction of the cathedral.

   

4. Isaac - a great treasury of a precious stone. During the construction of the temple, more than 400 kg of gold, half a tone of lapis lazuli, 1000 tons of bronze and 16 tons of malachite were used. There is a famous painting "The Last Supper", which is made in the form of a mosaic.

   

5. Deaths during the construction of the cathedral. During the construction of the dome temple, 100 kg of gold were processed. Mercury was also used during this procedure. This all led to the deaths of about 60 workers.

   

6. One of the first photographs in Russia - the construction of the cathedral. The photographs were taken in order to show them to future ancestors.

   

7. Great destruction of the temple. In 1922, the people of the Volga region were very starving, so the inhabitants of St. Petersburg decided to take 2 tons of silver and 48 kg of gold.

   

8. The first anti-religious museum in Russia. It was opened on the territory of the cathedral in April 1931.

   

9. Giant Foucault pendulum - a clear demonstration of the rotation of the Earth. In past times, it was considered a triumph in the field of science. Now it has been removed, and in its place is the figure of a dove.

   

10. Most of all the cathedral suffered during the Great Patriotic War. It was there that valuable exhibits were brought from other suburban museums. The consequences of the shells can still be observed on the columns of the temple.

    

11. Opening at the Cathedral Museum. It started functioning this way in 1948. And in the 1950s, a central platform was installed on the dome, from which a beautiful view of St. Petersburg opens.

    

12. The first church service in St. Isaac's Cathedral was held in 1990. Since that time, the service has been constantly held on great holidays and Sundays.

    

13. St. Isaac's Cathedral - the heaviest building in the city. Although no one ever weighed it, one column of it weighs only 110 tons. There are several dozen such columns in total.

    

14. Sculpture by O. Montferrand on the background of the temple. The architect was created in the antique style, along with a model of the cathedral in his hands.

    

15. The original monument of St. Petersburg - angels with lamps. They complete the temple. Previously, fire was lit in lamps with the help of resin.

    

St. Isaac's Cathedral was erected for 40 years, and when the scaffolding was finally removed from it, the need for construction as in a temple disappeared almost immediately.

About who built the famous temple, how many reconstructions he went through and what legends surround him - in the material of the Kultura.RF portal.

THREE PRECURSORS OF ISAAC'S COUNCIL

Saint Isaac's Cathedral Auguste Montferrand was the fourth cathedral built on this square. The first church in honor of St. Isaac of Dalmatia was erected for the workers of the Admiralty shipyards almost immediately after the foundation Petersburg . Rather, it was rebuilt from the building of the drawing barn under the direction of Harman van Boles. Peter I Born on the day of memory of St. Isaac, in 1712 he married Catherine I here. Already in 1717, when the old church began to deteriorate, a new stone building was laid. The construction was led by Georg Mattarnovi and Nikolai Gerbel. Half a century later, when the second Peter's church fell into disrepair, the third building was laid - already in a different place, a little further from the banks of the Neva. Its architect was Antonio Rinaldi.

DRAWER'S VICTORY OVER ARCHITECTS

The competition for the construction of the current St. Isaac's Cathedral was announced in 1809 by Alexander I. Among its participants were the best architects of their time - Andrian Zakharov, Andrey Voronikhin, Vasily Stasov, Giacomo Quarenghi, Charles Cameron. However, none of their projects satisfied the emperor. In 1816, on the advice of the head of the Committee for Buildings and Hydraulic Works, Augustine Betancourt, the work on the cathedral was entrusted to the young architect Auguste Montferrand. This decision was surprising: Montferrand did not have much experience in construction - he proved himself not with buildings, but with drawings.

UNSUCCESSFUL START OF CONSTRUCTION

The inexperience of the architect played a role. In 1819, the construction of the cathedral began according to the design of Montferrand, but just a year later, Anton Maudui, a member of the Committee for Buildings and Hydraulic Works, thoroughly criticized his project. He believed that when planning the foundations and pylons (support pillars), Montferrand made gross mistakes. This was due to the fact that the architect wanted to make the most of the fragments that remained from the Rinaldi Cathedral. Although at first Montferrand fought off Maudui's criticism with all his might, he later agreed with the criticism - and construction was suspended.

ARCHITECTURAL AND ENGINEERING ACHIEVEMENTS

In 1825, Montferrand designed a grand new building in the style classicism . Its height was 101.5 meters, and the diameter of the dome was almost 26 meters. The construction was extremely slow: it took 5 years only to create the foundation. For the foundation, deep trenches had to be dug, where tarred piles were driven in - more than 12 thousand pieces. After that, all the trenches were connected to each other and filled with water. With the onset of cold weather, the water froze, and the piles were cut down to the level of the ice. It took another two years to install the columns of four covered galleries - porticos , granite monoliths for which were supplied from Vyborg quarries.

For the next six years, walls and domed pillars were erected, another four years - vaults, domes and bell towers.

The main dome was not made of stone, as was traditionally done, but of metal, which greatly lightened its weight. When designing this structure, Montferrand was guided by the dome of London's St. Paul's Cathedral by Christopher Wren.

It took more than 100 kilograms of gold to gild the dome.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF SCULPTORS TO THE DESIGN OF THE CATHEDRAL

The sculptural decoration of the cathedral was created under the direction of Ivan Vitali.

By analogy with the Golden Gates of the Florentine Baptistery, he made impressive bronze doors with images of saints.

Vitali also became the author of statues of 12 apostles and angels on the corners of the building and above pilasters (flat columns). Above the pediments were placed bronze reliefs depicting biblical scenes performed by Vitali himself and Philip Honore Lemaire. Also, Peter Klodt and Alexander Loganovsky participated in the sculptural decoration of the temple.

STAINED GLASS, STONE FINISHING AND OTHER INTERIOR DETAILS

Work on the interiors of the cathedral took 17 years and ended only in 1858. Inside, the temple was decorated with valuable types of stones - lapis lazuli, malachite, porphyry, various types of marble.

The main artists of their time worked on the painting of the cathedral: Fyodor Bruni painted The Last Judgment, Karl Bryullov - more than 800-meter "Virgin in Glory" in the ceiling.

Iconostasis The cathedral was built in the form of a triumphal arch and decorated with monolithic malachite columns. The icons, made in the mosaic technique, were created according to the picturesque originals by Timothy Neff.

Mosaics decorated not only the iconostasis, but also a significant part of the walls of the temple. In the window of the main altar there was a stained-glass window depicting the Resurrection of Christ, made by Heinrich Maria von Hess.

EXPENSIVE PLEASURE

At the time of construction, St. Isaac's Cathedral became the most expensive church in Europe.

Only 2.5 million rubles were spent on laying the foundation. In total, Isaac cost the treasury 23 million rubles.

For comparison: the entire construction of St. Isaac's Trinity Cathedral cost two million. This was due both to the grandiose size (the temple, 102 meters high, still remains one of the largest cathedrals in the world), and to the luxurious interior and exterior decoration of the building.

Nicholas I , taken aback by such expenses, ordered to save at least on utensils.

DESIGNATION OF THE TEMPLE

The consecration of the cathedral was held as a public holiday: it was attended by Alexander II and the event lasted about seven hours.

Spectator seats were located around the cathedral, tickets for which cost a lot of money: from 25 to 100 rubles. Enterprising townspeople even rented out apartments with a view of St. Isaac's Cathedral, from where one could watch the ceremony.

Despite the fact that there were many people who wanted to attend the event, many of them did not appreciate St. Isaac's Cathedral, and at first, because of its proportions, the temple was nicknamed "The Inkwell".

MYTHS AND LEGENDS

It was rumored that such a long construction of the cathedral was by no means caused by the complexity of the work, but by the fact that the clairvoyant predicted Montferrand's death immediately after the completion of the temple. Indeed, the architect died a month after the consecration of Isaac. The will of the architect - to bury him in the temple - was never fulfilled. The coffin with the body of the architect was surrounded around the temple, and then handed over to the widow, who took the remains of her husband to Paris. After the death of Montferrand, passers-by allegedly saw his ghost wandering along the steps of the cathedral - he did not dare to enter the temple.

According to another legend, the house Romanovs was supposed to fall after the removal of the scaffolding that surrounded the cathedral for a long time after the consecration. Coincidence or not, but the scaffolding was finally removed in 1916, and in March 1917 Nicholas II abdicated the throne.

TEMPLE IN THE SOVIET TIME

In the first years of Soviet power, the temple remained active, but the state did not finance it, and seized all church valuables.

In 1931, an anti-religious museum was opened in the museum building. One of the key exhibits was the 90-meter Foucault pendulum suspended from the dome of the cathedral, which proved the fact of the Earth's rotation around its axis.

During the Great Patriotic War in the cellars of Isaac there was a warehouse where museum valuables were stored, which did not have time evacuate .

Since the German pilots used the dome of the cathedral as a guide, they did not shoot directly at the cathedral - and the vault remained unscathed.

However, the cathedral still suffered during the war years: the fragments that exploded near the temple damaged the columns, and the cold (Isaac was not heated during the siege) damaged the wall paintings.

The grandiose creation of the architect Montferrand is the fourth version of the Church of St. Isaac of Dalmatia in St. Petersburg. The fate of the first three cathedrals was decided by a series of troubles.

2014

The project of the current cathedral was created by the then little-known senior draftsman Auguste Montferrand. Construction went on for almost 40 years. The architect Antoine Maudui began to argue that the temple would collapse. I had to improve the project. Bryullov, who started painting the dome, fell ill, and Pyotr Basin completed it. Before the consecration of the temple in 1858, the cloth with which they were going to cover the path of the sovereign from the Winter Palace disappeared. A month after the consecration of the cathedral, Montferrand died. But his cathedral has been decorating the square for 156 years.

1710

The first church was wooden and stood at the Admiralty Shipyard (pictured). It was a converted barn, where they used to make drawings of ships. But dampness made it unusable. Therefore, in 1727, a stone church was built in a new place (where the Bronze Horseman now stands). But due to the proximity to the Neva, the soil was unstable, and cracks quickly appeared in the walls. In addition, lightning struck the temple and started a fire. The building was repaired for 10 years, but it continued to collapse, and in 1758 it was dismantled.

1768

For the third cathedral, a new place was chosen, where the current temple stands. Antonio Rinaldi undertook the project (pictured). But there were not enough funds, and for 28 years the cathedral was brought only to the eaves. It was completed by another Italian - Vincenzo Brenna. The temple differed from the project and came out single-domed, and the bell tower was two-tiered. It did not stand for a long time: in 1816, plaster collapsed from the vaults, and it was closed.